Opening up new opportunities

Labels converters have maintained consistently high rates of growth in our industry by leveraging the technological advances by suppliers of presses, inks, plates and materials and thrusting with their entrepreneurial skills into new markets and applications. But sometimes it is breakthroughs which come from outside the narrow web/sheetfed labels industry which provide the spur for the next big advance. 
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a classic example of this process. The key technical breakthroughs were made by semi-conductor companies such as Motorola, Philips and Texas Instruments which traditionally had little to do with the label converting industry. Very quickly, suppliers to the label industry were developing systems to apply RFID inlays to pressure-sensitive labels and labelstock suppliers were offering converters ‘off the shelf’ labels incorporating RFID inlays. Now we see the development of thermal transfer printers which combine the functionality of RFID programming units. Next will be the ability to print viable UHF antennae with conductive inks on narrow web machines with development projects underway to print the electronic components directly onto a label.
It will ultimately be the entrepreneurial skills of label converters which will translate these technological breakthroughs into real-world applications, driven by the big retailers and brands who suddenly see a major opportunity to cut costs and drive efficiencies through their supply chains.
Using RFID as a model, converters and industry suppliers with an eye to future growth should constantly scan the technological horizon outside their own industry to consider where the next innovations might come from.
 Just one possibility to consider is the development by German company Hekuma of an in-mould labeling process for thermoforming, which the company hopes to have out in the market by the start of next year.
Hekuma has already developed a one cavity system to see how labels perform during the thermoforming process. At present the label sits in the cavity under the rim and with the one cavity system this works very well. The problem on larger and faster machines is getting the air out of the cavity from under the labels, and one possibility is to put small holes in the labels to prevent bubbles from forming. No decision has yet been made about how best to achieve this and the company is currently looking at two approaches - putting the holes in the labels during printing and alternatively perforating them during the actual thermoforming process.

Hekuma is already scaling its technology up to a four cavity machine for in-mold labelling of beverage cups - think of single serve soups, for example -  which will be unveiled at the K plastics show in Dusseldorf, Germany.

When perfected, Hekuma’s  technology will enable thermoformers to adopt a decorative technology previously only available to injection moulders. This will open up major opportunities for label converters to enter markets currently dominated by direct decoration.

And not just sheetfed converters. Look out at Labelexpo Americas for significant developments in systems to convert rolls of IML labels, both in-line (GiDue’s approach, for example) and off-line (including systems from Dan Mekano and Gallus’ newly launched EM260/340/410/510’C’ converting systems). It is also interesting to note that Cut-in-Place IML machines - where the label web is cut on the application machine – now account for 10 per cent of IML installations, further opening opportunities for in-line printers capable of handling unsupported, heat sensitive substrates.

Although the labels industry remains under considerable pressure in Western Europe, North America and Japan, there remain open significant channels for growth for those with the vision to exploit them.